Chapter 264
Chapter 264:
A massive man with bleach-blond hair lunged from the pack with terrifying speed. He seized June’s right wrist in a grip like a hydraulic press and wrenched her arm out of her pocket.
June didn’t scream. Her survival instincts took over without conscious thought, pulling up everything drilled into her during the self-defense seminars she had taken in college — eyes, throat, groin. The knowledge was largely theoretical, but in that fraction of a second, pure survival compressed it into violent muscle memory.
She shifted her weight and drove her left knee upward in a brutal strike aimed at his groin.
He twisted his hips just in time. The knee connected hard with his stomach instead. He grunted in pain but his grip didn’t loosen. With a savage roar, he twisted her arm and tore the phone from her hand, threw it onto the concrete, and brought his combat boot down on it.
A sharp crack split the air. The screen shattered to powder. The internal board snapped clean. Her only lifeline to the outside world was gone.
The leader threw his head back and laughed — a harsh, grating sound that crawled across June’s skin.
“Not bad, sweetheart,” he said, tapping the steel pipe rhythmically against his palm. “But today you’re going to learn what happens when you mess with our money p>
The eight men began to close the circle. The physical pressure in the narrow enclosure became suffocating, the smell of sweat and rain mixing with the metallic cold of the steel walls.
June took a slow step backward. Her shoulder blades met the freezing surface of the container behind her. She was completely pinned.
Her mind ran calculations at a furious pace. Against eight armed men in an enclosed space, the mathematics of survival came back the same way every time.
The blond man rubbed his stomach, his eyes burning with humiliated fury. “I’m going to break your jaw first,” he snarled, raising his fist.
Joі𝗻 t𝗵𝗼𝗎ѕan𝖽𝘀 о𝖿 𝘧𝗮𝗻𝗌 𝗼n.сo𝗆
He lunged.
June ducked under the swing, pivoted on her heel, and drove her elbow hard into his exposed ribs. The impact was solid — but he was simply too large. He barely flinched, dropping his arm to wrap his forearm around her throat and driving her back against the steel wall with savage force.
The air was crushed from her lungs in an instant. A dark, overwhelming shadow closed in around her. The brutal reality of her physical disadvantage hit her like a wall of cold water.
The slaughter was about to begin.
The blond man pressed his heavy forearm against June’s windpipe, throwing his full weight forward to pin her flat against the freezing corrugated steel.
June’s lungs burned with a desperate, agonizing fire. She kicked and twisted with every ounce of strength she had, but the sheer biological difference in mass made her struggles useless. The blond man let out a guttural laugh. His free hand reached down and seized the lapel of her trench coat, yanking the fabric with savage force. A loud, sickening tear echoed in the alley as the coat split open, exposing the white silk blouse beneath.